C-netizens Howl in Outrage Over the Hot Mess C-drama Here to Heart with Janine Chang and Hans Zhang

Watching a C-drama requires taking some antacids and mentally prepping for endless cups of frustration. Even that doesn’t seem to be enough for those who watched recently aired romance Here to Heart, adapted from a novel so the story line should be all set but the drama nopes it ways into “dog blood” (i.e. makjang) territory anyways. Starring Hans Zhang and Janine Chang, keep up with the viewer feedback on this drama has been a drama in itself and particularly entertaining. Apparently the leads were reduced to guest starring roles based on their screen time and any novel sweet moments were cut from the drama and there were additional roadblocks thrown in to keep them apart. Feel free to vent about Here to Heart and if anyone is curious check it out for some unintentional entertainment of the so bad it’s good variety.

Comments

I was watching this on viki till I got frustrated by the leads miscommunication. And they were both fake dating someone else just to keep appearance with each other. I mean, just sit down and talk. So many episodes later and still nothing has been cleared between the two of them. Janine Chang is so pretty here

One of the worst dragging drama of the year. I don’t know the novel, but the drama is awful. It’s so full of misunderstanding, they are completely unable to honestly talk. It’s unbelievable how they produce a 45 episodes drama without a plot. Most of the episodes follows the same scheme. The male lead lies or omit something, female lead discovers it, is hurt, tries to stay away, male lead tells her she is bad because she can’t separate business and private life, she cries. In the middle there are several business talks and that’s all.
Luckily I skipped a lot, so saved a lot of time, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

I dropped this for Moonshine and Valentine. Imo a modern drama should not go beyond 30 episodes. There’s so many useless subplots once the episode count is high. The same for another drama – The Way We Were.

Same here. At least Helan means it when he says “I have never lied to you in this lifetime” (though i have a feeling that this will come back to hunt him one day). Love how the characters don’t lie to each other. Can’t get enough of it!

I was watching it but then dropped it because it was too frustrating to watch (i didnt read the book). Xian is annoying in how he allows everyone to misunderstand his relationship with Yi Xin, while waxing lyrical about his unchanging love for the Wen Nuan.

So it wasn’t just me. The filler in this drama was horrible.
There was maybe just enough for 20 episodes or so and even that was a stretch. I skipped my way through the last half and only stuck with it because the leads did have amazing chemistry. What a waste.

Cdramas always drag and it isn’t that surprising actually seeing how there are all 40-50 episodes and with so many unnecessary side-characters. That’s why I prefer Jdramas where it is only 10 episodes and the pace is good.

Cdrama is all about investment and money. Station and streaming sites buys the drama by episodes count, so more episodes means more money.
Then the fees for leads is high enough sometimes that some investment come from supporting role agency company. That’s why nowadays supports have more screentime then the leads.

The costumes in here where 99% beautiful. They put almost every plot device they could in one drama. Spoilers- Memory loss, disappearance, square romance not triangle romance, fake romance, horrible mother in law, back stabbers, older woman/younger man, popular boy where all your friends/family crush on, lack of communication then getting mad that you’re misunderstood, dead parents, suicide, one sided love confessions, businesss/love rivals. I only stuck around cause Janice was very pretty and the chemistry when she was onscreen with Hans was incredible. They could prob do a director’s cut of like 4 epi like Wallace’s My Sunshine. This and william’s only side by side could have been done in 20epi max. This one didn’t have too many flashbacks like William but both made me lose interest and was too draggy!!!

What an great description fmod the supposed leads being relegated to starring Guest roles. That was how I felt about the drama..could not watch it past 5 episodes. Janine is very prett, but she had this one bewildered “why won’t he love me” look the whole time with veey little change in facial expressions. Han Zheng at least can portray a more mature him which is different than his other dramas…but evwn then, I cannot tell if he loves Janine ir not or if he was just playing games with her. I guess, I will just go to the last episode and hit the fast forward button to see what happens at the end.

A heavy let down drama. I was here for Zhang Han and Janine but it’s so frustrating watching the whole thing that I stop altogether. The actress (2nd lead) has more story to tell that she was the main focus like 2/3 of the whole drama. I won’t recommend this.

This was watchable solely on the leads chemistry. But they got increasingly less screen time which is SO frustrating. Just watch cuts, people. Save yourself the hours. I stopped watching in the last two weeks and plan on watching cuts.
In all fairness tho, I heard the novel was EVEN MORE dog-blood than the drama. So there’s that.

Ditto to all the above comments. I watched the first few episodes then started checking every 4-5 then 10 episodes😊. It was entertaining to see the women’s fashion and accessories. And, I was incredulous that it didn’t matter which episodes I watched or which order- the plot lines were always the same. And if China’s top games companies operated with the kind of management and business operations like this drama they’d all be bankrupt.

I think the only overused plot line they missed was the truck of doom! I enjoyed the parts of the drama I didn’t fast-forward through. I used the remote so much that I had a hard time not skipping through better dramas because I developed a habit. Vicious editing would have done wonders!

I watch HK, TW, and K-dramas mostly. I try to steer away from C-dramas because of the long episode count and for fear of being disappointed with the ending. The last C-drama I watched was Princess Agents. I think this drama was 70 episodes in total. This drama is based on the Princess Agent novels and production says that they were only able to shoot half of the content of the book. How the f*** do you tell me that in 70 episodes you can’t even finish shooting the entire novel? (*Facepalm)

Lmao.. Such a mess. I did fast forwarded some scenes, well, most of the scenes of some last episodes. Ught… Meh. I got bored of their ‘fake’ dating and i hated the dog blood in Cdramas. Draggy. Very much.

Ps : zhang han looked unattractive in this drama… That’s why i shipped her with her ‘best friend’. Both were crazy and afraid to move on. Sigh.

Agree with you regarding Zhang Han’s looks; His hair style made him looked so much older and dated. I couldn’t get past ep 3 because every time he crowded her in the elevator, I wanted to scream “don’t you realize that’s sexual harassment?” If I were her, I’d have stumped his foot or kicked his shin. That just really turned me off. Glad to know I didn’t miss anything special.

Janine & Han had incredible chemistry and that was the only reason I stuck it out to the end….Sheer torture I will tell you. There were at least 6 episodes in the middle where they had absolutely No contact with each other! With each next episode I got more and more irritated…fast forwarded through most of the episodes…Did the writer go crazy??? I didn’t start watching this drama to have the leads drop off the radar in favor of the 2nd lead actress’ storyline, which by the way was super boring. I have never seen a drama that was crazy enough to do something like this. Seems the writer didn’t know how to handle it or he/she favored the actress character. Whatever…The plot towards the end got even worse with a fake marriage plot and missing boyfriend. The leads are great when together but forget everything else about this trainwreck.

All the above negative comments are made by people who are impatient and don’t follow the story properly. e.g. I have read comments regarding that he is playing games with her etc. From the lst episode he already acknowledged to himself silently ‘Siow nuan (the girl’s name) during these 7 years apart from you there has been nobody in my heart” For myself I love this drama, appreciate the push and pull of two torn apart lovers trying to get back together because the attraction for each other is still strong, the off the chart chemistry of the main leads. the strong acting of the team, the fashion, music and even the business rivalry. I would recommend to people who are more particular in their viewing and who appreciate this type of story. I have viewed this drama three times, the more I see the more I appreciate the story.

I agree with you, Jo. This is a good series and I loved the love story between the main leads.I watched Zhang Han and Janine’s scenes together over and over again. They looked so cute together and I loved their chemistry. I hope to see more series with them paired opposite each other again. I loved their older series “The Four”. They were so romantic there too.